Category “Pregnancy”

We were alone that weekend. Dad was in Ohio visiting Grandma and Grandpa and wouldn’t be back til Monday. So it was just you and me.

Our first weekend together.

I wish I could remember what the weather was like that Sunday morning. What the sky looked like. The temperature. Anything. But I can’t, because the weather wasn’t important to me that day.

I was preoccupied with you.

When you’re a little bit older, you and I will watch Mary Poppins together. I’ll tell you that it was one of my very favorite movies growing up, and that I used to be able to recite every word. And when it gets to the scene early in the movie when the Admiral’s weather vane does an 180 degree turn, I’ll remember that Sunday morning, a year ago today, when my life suddenly changed directions.

I’d gone out the night before for a digital test. I’d taken a regular one that afternoon – the cheapest one I could find – and had spent hours staring at the little white strip, squinting at the ultra faint hint of pink that I could only see if I held the test up to the window and turned it just so. And even then, I wasn’t sure I actually saw it. By Saturday night, whatever had been there had faded to white, leaving me to wonder if it’d ever been there to begin with. So I drove to the drugstore in my pajamas and bought a digital test. I’ll take it tomorrow morning, I decided. First thing.

And 8 hours later, there it was in black and white: PREGNANT.

It was Mothers’ Day. I was a mother. But it was more than that. In that moment, staring at those eight letters, overwhelmed by emotions I couldn’t begin to name, I became your mother. I didn’t know anything about you, and yet, somehow, right then, I knew you.

And, oh, how I loved you.

So this day is our day, sweet girl. The day our journey began. Lord willing, someday there will be other little people who will call me mom. But you will always be the first. And this day, it will always belong to you.

And yet, when they put you in my arms and you looked up at me, with eyes shaped just like your daddy’s, I recognized you. The baby I’ve seen in my dreams. The one I left in my car with the doors unlocked. The one I forgot to feed for two days. The one I took out of my belly to play with at 6 months (and then somehow put back in). The baby I just knew was a boy…

Welcome to the world Lil Mil. You won’t remember this day, but I won’t forget a moment of it. The moment you entered the world. The moment you looked up at me for the first time. This moment — just sitting here in a hospital bed, watching both you and your daddy sleep, crying big fat tears of overwhelming, overflowing joy.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to say that pregnant bellies are beautiful — that my own pregnant belly is beautiful. But c’mon, people. Scroll back up. Take a good look.

That is, if you can even see the belly past the GIANT DEFORMED BELLY BUTTON obstructing your view. Look at that thing! Stretched splotchy skin. Patches of peach fuzz. A dark crooked line pointing directly at the malformation that once was a normal-looking belly button. And then, of course, there’s the disporpotionate size of the thing.

Sure, we can insist to each other and to ourselves that the pregnant belly is beautiful. And maybe some of them are. But right now we’re talking about mine. I maintain that if there were not a little tiny human growing inside it, you would not hesitate to point and laugh.

And you shouldn’t. Hesitate, that is. You should point and laugh and laugh and laugh. And then laugh some more. Why? Because it’s funny. Because I think God has a sense of humor. Because pregnancy is one of those miracles that warrants more than just our awe and reverence. It’s a miracle that deserves a great big belly laugh.

The last 39 weeks of my life have been the slowest I have ever lived. I feel like I have been pregnant for years.

If I had spent the last nine months anxiously awaiting the birth of my baby, itching for the day to arrive, then the slow crawl would make sense. The whole a-watched-pot-never-boils thing. But I haven’t been. If anything, I’ve been doing the opposite — trying to treasure and enjoy each day of this pregnancy, knowing that you can only be pregnant with your first child once. And since the moments you’re trying to savor tend to disappear the fastest, I’ve spent the last 39 weeks waiting for the moment when all of a sudden time would shift into 5th gear and start zooming by.

But it hasn’t. Time has stayed at a slow, steady crawl. Days have inched past. And even though I look and feel more pregnant each day, and even though I’ve officially crossed into I-could-have-this-baby-at-any-moment territory, the fact that I am HAVING A BABY doesn’t feel any more real now than it did at week one. Sure, in my head I know that by this time next month (next week?), I’ll be someone’s mom. And in my heart, I already feel connected to this little person inside of me in a way I never could’ve imagined. But the whole thing still feels so far off. So remote. Kinda like the Apocalypse: something I know will happen eventually… just not today. Or tomorrow. Or next week.

(Sidebar: As I was typing the previous sentence, I got butterflies in my stomach. That familiar something-is-about-to-happen feeling. Oddly, I had the same feeling the night before I got engaged, even though I had no idea that Husband was planning to propose. If I have this baby tomorrow, I might abandon this blog and launch a psychic hotline).

Here’s a question: does any of this matter? Is it important that I feel the full weight of reality right now? Is that a necessary step in the motherhood preparation process? Will I be more ready for this baby if I can somehow manage to wrap my head around the fact that he/she is coming?

Maybe not. And yet, right now I so desperately want to feel the weight of what’s about to happen. I want it to sink in at every level, to invade every corner and crevice of my being. Why? Because the moment that happens, I might just be able to look the future in the eye and say “Okay. I’m ready.”